Our Rotary Club is a collection of passionate difference-makers, hailing from all corners of North St. Paul, Maplewood, and Oakdale, united in our desire to improve lives locally and globally, and we cannot do it alone.

Without your support, the Rotary Club is powerless to provide vital assistance to our local and global communities.

Please consider giving to our Rotary Club this year, either with a direct donation or through participation in our Annual Sporting Clay Shoot, our one-and-only fund raiser!

Each year community-minded citizens and businesses with a love for sports, the outdoors, or hunting come together for a sporting clay shoot to support the community work of the Rotary Club of North St. Paul, Maplewood, and Oakdale. Without the support of the community for this event, the club’s sole fund-raiser, most of its community projects would not be possible.

Set in the beautiful woods and fields of the Wild Wings Hunting Club in Hugo, the event regularly draws 30-plus teams of 5 shooters each. The Rotary Club raises in excess of $40,000 at the event, 100 percent of which goes to fund the club’s annual programs.

The day unfolds with a hearty lunch during registration at noon, and the shoot begins at 1 p.m. Afterward, shooters enjoy hors d’oeuvres and refreshments at 3:30 p.m. during the live auction and raffle.

Everyone who participates will receive a memento of the day, and prize-winning opportunities abound.

• Our local Rotary Club, founded in 1979, is part of Rotary International and has about 50 members, ranging from doctors and bankers to architects and educators.

• In a typical year, the North St. Paul, Maplewood, and Oakdale Rotary Club and its foundation spend more than $70,000 to improve lives locally and globally.

• Rotarians give their own time, treasure, and talent as part of their commitment to Rotary.

• Rotary was founded in 1905. Rotary has 1.2 million members in 32,000 clubs throughout 200 countries worldwide. Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders dedicated to providing humanitarian service, encouraging high ethical standards in all vocations, and helping build goodwill and peace around the world.

• Our Rotary Club founded and continues to support the North St. Paul Foodshelf.

• The Rotary Club annually raises money for starving peoples around the globe with its Fast for Hope. In 2007, Rotarians used the occasion to stuff food packages for Feed My Starving Children, a local nonprofit dedicated to solving world hunger.

• This Rotary Club serves 900 Meals on Wheels on two routes annually.

• Local Rotary Clubs sponsor Group Study Exchanges with clubs across the globe. Our club also sponsors international exchange students.

• Our Rotary Club hosts an annual Christmas party for more than 100 local seniors.

• Rotarians annually hold a Christmas toy exchange, providing toys for families in the care of the Merrick Community Center. From this exchange, between 500 and 1,000 kids have received presents from local Rotarians in resent years.

• This Rotary Club provides mentorships for Tartan High seniors and awards thousands of dollars in scholarships to local high school seniors from Hill-Murray, Tartan, North, and Mounds Park Academy.

Globally, Rotary has contributed more than $600 million toward eradicating the crippling disease. Locally, Rotary Clubs recently banded together to raise an additional $80 million, and the Rotary Club of North St. Paul, Maplewood, and Oakdale committed $10,000 over three recent years for the project.

Today there are less than 1500 cases of Polio per year thanks to Rotary.  We will keep working eliminate Polio completely.

A few of the many organizations receiving Rotary funds totaling almost $50,000 in a recent year:

• Boy Scouts of America
• Century College Foundation
• District 622 Education Foundation Staars Banquet
• Good Samaritan Nursing Home
• International Fast for Hope
• Merrick Community Services
• North St. Paul Food Shelf
• Northeast Family YMCA
• Ramsey County Nursing Home
• Salvation Army Adult Day Care
• Tartan Uprising
• Vietnam Children's Fund
• Youth Adventures

Our club will often engage in a project of special meaning and immense breadth. Indeed, perhaps this club's most lasting legacy will be one of its special projects: a 2006 donation of $22,667 in funds for the purchase of equipment that will help dig water wells in impoverished villages throughout Tanzania.

When Rotarian Roger Schwartz of Oakdale visited Tanzania in 2001, he helped initiate a series events that cascaded into an achievement that changed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, impoverished Tanzanians.

Schwartz traveled with St. Paul Partners, a group concerned about the state of safe drinking water in Tanzania where women and children would commonly make mile-long trips on foot to collect diseased and polluted drinking water - the only water available.

Through the work of St. Paul Partners and now our Rotary Club, Schwartz estimates they have dug or improved some 60-plus wells, providing clean drinking water for the first time to some 25,000 Tanzanians.  Rotary has also helped repair and upgrade the water servic to Ilula Hospital of Iringa, Tanzania.